Issued to coincide with the Twyla Tharp-Mikhail Baryshnikov national tour, premier choreographer Twyla Tharp reveals her extraordinary odyssey that changed contemporary dance. She recounts her unique story, from her childhood to her training in classical ballet to her struggle to find her own vision. Photographs.

A fast-paced tale of greed—Push Comes to Shove examines the pitfalls and struggles that an honest family faces to survive the perils of financial woes. The bills are due again for Greg “GP” Patterson, but this time, they won’t get paid. He and his wife are facing robbery charges when a simple assault they committed goes bad. After a few days in jail, the Pattersons lose everything they own and risk losing their children forever. Luckily Aunty Jewels bails the Pattersons out, but GP must make some serious moves if he is to provide decent shelter for his family again. A visit to Squeeze, a villainous loan shark, leads to killer interest rates and a murderous default penalty. Nevertheless, GP accepts the terms. When GP gives Jewels the loan money to flip in a high-stakes credit card scheme, she gets robbed for every single dime. Now GP has to figure out how to pay his debt and gain the respect of his family again, but in the meantime, Jewels has already figured out how to make everybody pay. An entertaining, multicultural drama, Push Comes to Shove is a cautionary tale for today’s economically fraught times.

The new celebration of women's aggression in contemporary culture, from Kill Bill and Prime Suspect to the artists group Toxic Titties. In the past, more often than not, aggressive women have been rebuked, told to keep a lid on, turn the other cheek, get over it. Repression more than aggression was seen as woman's domain. But recently there's been a noticeable cultural shift. With growing frequency, women's aggression is now celebrated in contemporary culture—in movies and TV, online ventures, and art. In Push Comes to Shove, Maud Lavin examines these new images of aggressive women and how they affect women's lives. Aggression, says Lavin, need not entail causing harm to another; we can think of it as the use of force to create change—fruitful, destructive, or both. And over the past twenty years, contemporary culture has shown women seizing this power. Lavin chooses provocative examples to explore the complexity of aggression, including the surfer girls in Blue Crush, Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, the homicidal women in Kill Bill, and artist Marlene McCarty's mural-sized Murder Girls. Women need aggression and need to use it consciously, Lavin writes. With Push Comes to Shove, she explores the crucial questions of how to manifest aggression, how to represent it, and how to keep open a cultural space for it.

When we ask our kids, “What’d you do in school today?” and they mumble, “Nothin',” they’re telling the truth. Steve Perry gets it. He understands why some parents are panicked about what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms, and how other parents, whose kids supposedly attend the “good” schools, still fear that their children are falling behind. As principal of one of the best performing schools in America – one that sends 100% of its mostly minority students to four-year colleges – Perry delights in proving “the system” wrong. In this solution-oriented manifesto, Perry covers the full range of issues holding back today’s students. He shows parents and principals how to find great teachers (and get rid of the bad ones), how to make readers out of kids who hate to read, how to make the school curriculum thrilling rather than sleep-inducing, how to conduct an all-important education “home audit,” how to “e-organize” if school boards and administrators aren’t getting the message, how to build a “school of the future,” and much more. The era of third-rate education is over. Push has come to shove!

Offers advice on how to deal with bullying, for targets, bullies, and witnesses.

Mascot Books announces the release of Not So Bad After All written by Daniel Amaguana with illustrations by Nabi Bilal. Come along to school with Daniel as he overcomes challenges, stands up to bullies, and gains confidence in all the new adolescent experiences! With engaging rhymes and colorful illustrations, this is the perfect book for any kid who could use a self- esteem boost and learn to tackle the social scene at school.

"In the tradition of bestselling explainers like The Tipping Point, [this] book [is] based on cutting edge science that breaks down the idea of extreme conflict--the kind that paralyzes people and places--and then shows how to escape it"--

Thomas McGurrin is a fourth-grade teacher and openly gay man at a private primary school serving Portland, Oregon's wealthy progressive elite when he is falsely accused of inappropriately touching a male student. The accusation comes just as Thomas is thrust back into the center of his unusual family by his younger brother's battle with cancer. Although cleared of the accusation, Thomas is forced to resign from a job he loves during a potentially life-changing family drama. Davison's novel explores the discrepancy between the progressive ideals and persistent negative stereotypes among the privileged regarding social status, race, and sexual orientation and the impact of that discrepancy on friendships and family relations.

An honest and groundbreaking guide to understanding the complicated emotions that develop between stepmothers and children. When faced with often overwhelming challenges, what woman with stepchildren is unfamiliar with that “stepmonster” feeling? Half of all women in the United States will live with or marry a man with children. To guide women new to this role—and empower those who are struggling with it—Wednesday Martin draws upon her own experience as a stepmother. She's frank about the harrowing process of becoming a stepmother, she considers the myths and realities of being married to a man with children, and she counteracts the cultural notion that stepmothers are solely responsible for the problems that often develop. Along the way, she interviews other stepmothers and stepchildren and offers up fascinating insights from literature, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology that explain the little-understood realities of this unique parent-child relationship and—in an unexpected twist—shows why the myth of the Wicked Stepmother is the single best tool for understanding who real stepmothers are and how they feel.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of the world’s legendary artists and bestselling author of The Creative Habit shares her secrets—from insight to action—for harnessing vitality, finding purpose as you age, and expanding one’s possibilities over the course of a lifetime in her newest New York Times bestseller Keep It Moving. At seventy-eight, Twyla Tharp is revered not only for the dances she makes—but for her astounding regime of exercise and nonstop engagement. She is famed for religiously hitting the gym each morning at daybreak, and utilizing that energy to propel her breakneck schedule as a teacher, writer, creator, and lecturer. This book grew out of the question she was asked most frequently: “How do you keep working?” Keep It Moving is a series of no-nonsense mediations on how to live with purpose as time passes. From the details of how she stays motivated to the stages of her evolving fitness routine, Tharp models how fulfillment depends not on fortune—but on attitude, possible for anyone willing to try and keep trying. Culling anecdotes from Twyla’s life and the lives of other luminaries, each chapter is accompanied by a small exercise that will help anyone develop a more hopeful and energetic approach to the everyday. Twyla will tell you what the beauty-fitness-wellness industry won’t: chasing youth is a losing proposition. Instead, Keep It Moving focuses you on what’s here and where you’re going—the book for anyone who wishes to maintain their prime for life.